China handled COVID-19 better than US
ACCORDING to the World Health Organization (WHO), to date 4,450,731 deaths have occurred globally owing to the pandemic COVID-19.
Out of these 623,900 deaths took place in the USA, while China suffered a total of 5,676 deaths so far.
Statistics speak for themselves that the world’s largest power, the USA, despite the advancement of its science, technology and medical resources, has been the world’s most affected nation.
Tracing the origin of the virus is essential to ensure that it does not recur but origin tracing is a complex scientific matter that involves many disciplines and experts in many different fields.
The origin tracing of diseases such as AIDS, Ebola, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, SARS in 2003, and avian flu in 2009 all proved to be very difficult, and some of their origins still remain undiscovered.
Unfortunately, the US is bent upon blaming China for the origin. President Joe Biden had tasked the Intelligence Committee to “redouble” their efforts in investigating the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic, including the possibility that it emerged from a lab accident, and report back to him in 90 days.
Following the completion of the stipulated limit, President Biden has been briefed while an unclassified report is being prepared for release to the public.
According to CNN, all the agencies in the Intelligence Community, though, had low confidence in either of the Covid-19 origin theories—a lab accident or natural emergence. Even members of the US Congress are not entirely convinced of China’s culpability.
Reportedly, before the deadline, US media, politicians, intelligence agencies and other involved parties were working together to manufacture evidence for a “lab leak theory” that blames China for the outbreak.
On Aug 5, CNN issued an exclusive report saying US intelligence agencies are digging through a “treasure trove” of genetic data that could be “key” to uncovering the origins of the corona-virus, as soon as they can decipher it.
However, CNN admitted it’s unclear exactly how or when US intelligence agencies gained access to this information.
The US has politicized the origin tracing process of the COVID-19 pandemic to such an extent that it has given rise to Anti-Asian hate crime in the US.
According to a research by the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, Anti-Asian hate crimes have risen by over 169% post pandemic as the US continue to allege that the COVID-19 virus originated from China.
However, if we were to impartially take a look at the origin of the COVID-19 from reputable and credible sources, we would see that the COVID-19 virus was making rounds around the globe much earlier than the first case reported in Wuhan, China.
According to an article published by the Reuters on 26th June 2020, Spanish virologists found traces of the COVID-19 virus in a sample of waste water collected in Barcelona in March 2019. This was 9 months prior to the first reported case in Wuhan, China.
Results of scientific research and the related patent registration information have shown that Ralph Baric could be called as the first person who synthesized a corona-virus.
Baric, a 67-year-old professor of epidemiology and microbiology and immunology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-Chapel Hill), has been exploring in the field of coronaviruses for more than 30 years and has his own lab.
He successfully created “an infectious clone of the urban strain of the SARS coronavirus” by July 2003 at the US “Army’s top bio-level three labs in Maryland,” according to an article published by UNC-Chapel Hill in 2003.
Baric’s team had synthetically reconstructed the bat variant of the SARS corona-virus (CoV) that caused the SARS epidemic in 2003, according to a report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in 2008.
On March 30, WHO released the joint study report “WHO-convened Global Study of Origins of SARS-CoV-2: China Part,” marking a good start for the global study of the origins of SARS-CoV-2.
Governments, scientists, and media outlets around the world have paid great attention to the report.
Over the past few months since the report was released, more and more scientific evidence has proved it is a valuable and authoritative report that stands the test of science and time.
The conclusions of the report are scientific, as they were made on the basis of scientific principles.
This milieu raises serious questions on the allegations raised by the US.
(1). If China is the origin source of the COVID-19 virus, why were there such few cases in China even with a larger population?
(2). If the US is not the origin source of the virus, then how did their numbers reach so high? Is the US medical system so dysfunctional?
(3). Is it possible that the US would shift blame on a pandemic that may have originated within their borders?
The US and China were studying SARS-like viruses in scientific partnerships of US and Chinese scientists.
This joint research was taking place in US laboratories and at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
It therefore makes no sense for the US to cast blame on China. If by any chance there was indeed a research-related spillover, it may well have happened in the course of US-funded research.
Conclusively, the US and China should work cooperatively together and with the global scientific community to examine all possibilities of the origin of COVID-19, to make the world a better place.
—The writer is retired PAF Group Captain and a TV talk show host.
